


Just East of the Pacific

by SlippinMickeys



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Ficlet, First Time, Post-Episode: s05e07 Emily, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:19:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23256802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlippinMickeys/pseuds/SlippinMickeys
Summary: Something in the cold foamy brine of the Pacific pushes at her, turning her away from its embrace. My father is in the Atlantic, she thinks.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 13
Kudos: 137





	Just East of the Pacific

Something in the cold foamy brine of the Pacific pushes at her, turning her away from its embrace.  _ My father is in the Atlantic _ , she thinks. 

Mulder waits in the car, a hundred yards away. A hundred yards of cold, heavy sand that pulls at her feet with every slow step. She slogs her way back toward him, a fitting metaphor for their relationship at present. 

He didn’t tell her about her own ova, and she wants to forgive him, but can’t. She wants to hit him, but can’t. She wants to fuck him, to drive away her anger and anguish with a night of wanton recklessness, but won’t. She never does anything she should, not when it comes to him. 

Mulder had pocketed her frozen children. He’d held a dying Emily in his arms. He brought her the cure for her cancer, and then he walked away. 

She stamps the sand off her shoes as best she can before she opens the passenger door. It’s quiet in the car, stuffy. The sodden husks of sunflower seeds overflow in the ashtray, a few spilled to the floor. She picks one up and rolls down the window a crack, flicking it outside. The damp of his saliva leaves a streak on her thumb.

Mulder puts a hand on the keys in the ignition, but doesn’t start the car. 

“You ready to go?” he asks. 

She shakes her head, but doesn’t say anything and his hand falls back into his lap. 

The sky is the color of a blue jay’s crest, cirrus clouds like feathers on the wing of an endless day. December in California feels false somehow, the sun bright, but cool. Christmas lights wrapped around palm trees, a faded plastic Santa perched on a tar-bubbled roof. She wants to go home. 

“Take me to your hotel,” she says instead, and she can feel his eyes on her. 

“Scully?”

She turns to him, her eyes sharp. 

“Your hotel,” she says, “take me there.”

She flashes on Ed Jerse; the ergot in her skin, St. Anthony’s Fire in her blood. That same brash, foolhardy feeling runs like claret through her veins. Perhaps it’s grief. 

She holds his gaze until he looks away and he starts the car without a word.

XxXxXxXxXxX

He’s not sure what to expect from her when the hotel door closes behind them, but he gets a flash of second sight for an instant, and he can see her naked back planed out before him, can feel the bones of her hips under his hands, her skin as hot as a lit wick. 

The room is dim and cool, and she moves like a shadow through the space, kicking off her shoes and stepping into his sphere. His cock throbs under his jeans. 

They haven’t said a word since the parking lot by the ocean, where he spent the whole of the time she was out of the car trying to figure out how to ask for her forgiveness. 

She reaches out suddenly and runs her hands up under his leather jacket, cleaving it from his shoulders, and he’s so startled that he doesn’t notice that she’s stepped up on top of his feet, using them as a lever to get her face closer to his. 

She nips at his lips, her hands holding his tee shirt in a strong grip over his chest. 

He puts his hands on hers, gently pushing at them. 

“Scully,” he whispers, “not like this.”

She nods at him in counterpoint; _ exactly like this _ , she seems to say, and then disengages one of her hands from his and rubs it firmly along the crotch of his jeans, where his erection has already reached critical mass, betraying the conviction of his argument that they should not be doing this. Not like this. 

She reaches down and takes the hem of his tee shirt and pulls it up and over his head. He could still stop this, and probably should, but he won’t. He’s wanted her since she stripped to her simple white Hanes in the fug of an Oregon storm, and there is no one he loves or trusts more than she. If she needs this to get through the pain of finding and losing a daughter, then who is he to refuse her? 

He wants to do this right. 

He reaches out and takes her face in his hands, rubbing his thumbs up once over her cheekbones and looking into her eyes; they’re pleading, but not desperate, and he can read in them that she wants him to make her feel something -- anything -- but what she’s been feeling the past few days. 

“Scuh-” he starts, but she puts a finger over his lips and no words now, no words. 

He kisses her instead. Once in apology, twice in remorse. The third time is as Asmodeus intended, and their tongues meet in a tangled surge of lust. 

He backs her to the edge of the bed, unwilling and unable to remove his mouth from hers until he’s forced to when the backs of her knees hit the bed and she sits. He kneels before her, hands around her calves. She’s breathing hard, and so is he. 

She runs her fingers through his hair, her eyes holding his, her nails scraping his scalp. He shivers under her touch. 

She leans back to remove her shirt, her bra, dropping them lightly to the floor near his knees. She is bare to the waist before him, her breasts high and full, her carmine hair tousled and mussed in a mane around her head. Her breasts rise every time she breathes in, and her nipples have hardened into tight raspberry buds that he can’t wait to taste. Her every breath is like an invitation. He leans forward and tongues one tentatively, and she pulls his head to her chest with force. 

He hasn’t had nearly enough time to worship them before she pulls his head up and he rises from the floor, following her as she shimmies her way up the bed, pausing only to hook her thumbs into her pants and underwear, and peeling them off like snakeskin. She’s fully bare to him now, one knee propped up and the other bent to the side, revealing her swollen sex, glistening in the half light. He has to remind himself to breathe. 

Her hands move to the fly of his jeans, and he assists her, kicking off his shoes, socks and remaining clothes in a quick kinetic move. Before he can settle, she has him gripped firmly in her hot little hand and he wants to take it all in, but his eyes slip closed of their own volition. 

The entire world around him is reduced to her hand on his cock and her mouth on his neck. She pulls him slowly to her, and he settles into her side, palms her flat belly, slides his fingers into the damp curls of her mons. She arches away from him when his fingers slide inside her; she’s as smooth and frictionless as liquid mercury. 

She grinds herself into his hand, squeezing his cock as she does so and lights pop behind his eyes. With his other hand, he takes her cheek, thumb under her lips and around her jaw and turns her head so she’ll look at him. Her eyes are wide, pupils dilated, bottomless. He tries to tell her with his eyes all the things she won’t let him say. 

He pulls his fingers out from inside her and she whimpers in protest, then watches as he pushes his fingers into his mouth and licks them clean. She smiles briefly and he lets go of her face. Her full lips whisper something he can’t make out as she rolls on top of him. 

He reaches out to sweep his hands over the rest of her, mapping out freckles, memorizing by feel. She’s as malleable as cooling wax under his hands, the hot slip of her center resting on his thigh. 

She slides up him and centers herself carefully, eyeing him through a curtain of hair. He nods at her with certainty and she lowers herself down, and each inch of her feels like a new discovery. Her wet, slick heat is simultaneously rapture and a torment. She moans when the bones of her pelvis meet his, and he reaches out to gently rest his hands on her hips. 

Then it's all ebb and flow, her breasts swaying heavily with each gentle flexion of her spine, her hair falling in front her eyes, her name on his lips, everything they are to each other a soft hiss and whimper.

When she comes, it’s a long, slow purl, her head thrown forward on his chest, nails dug into the skin on his arms. He follows her home, her pulsing body all he needs as encouragement; his fingers tightening on her hips, a hard surge up, and then a second one, lifting them both up and off the mattress as he empties into her.

She goes limp on top of him and he can feel the hard thump of her heart over his own, slowing as he runs his hands up and down her back, drawing words onto her skin, hoping she can read them. 

Finally she rolls off of him and he slips out of her, his lap suddenly cool. She flings an arm over her head and takes a deep breath, letting it whistle out through her teeth. Her other hand slips down and finds his, squeezes his gummy fingers. She doesn’t let go. 

It’s still early in the day, but he feels the hazy pull of sleep, and the last thing he sees before it pulls him under is the sunlight shining through a gap in the curtain, its orangey glow slanted like an arrow over her form, lighting her hair like corona in the dim room. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

When she wakes, it is dark, and the demons inside her are settled and calm.

Mulder has curled himself around her in sleep, one of his legs situated between her own, the thin sheet pulled up and over them both. His breathing is deep and one of his hands lays limply over one breast, hot and a little sweaty. There is an ache between her legs and one arm is falling asleep, but she has no desire to move.

The sadness inside her is tamped down, serenity easing into its place. Her father is in the Atlantic and Emily is in the stars. Scully is earthbound, but free, propped up by the faith of a good man. In the morning, she will take his hand and let him lead her, straight-backed and unwavering through the valleys of her life. 

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to admiralty for the beta. 
> 
> I stole one line of mine from a previous Drabble; I hope no one minds. 
> 
> It’s a weird time to live on planet Earth. Thanks for making the journey with me.


End file.
